2018 Winter Olympics To Change Ad Guarantee Metric

by Wayne Friedman , March 29, 2017

For NBCUniversal’s next Olympics -- the Winter Games in PyeongChang, South Korea in 2018 -- the TV network group is changing its advertising guarantee metric for advertisers.

During a press conference call, Dan Lovinger, EVP, advertising sales for NBC Sports Group, says NBCUniversal will no longer offer Olympic TV marketers guarantees based on a TV household metric. Now guarantees will be on viewers 2-plus (2 years and older).

NBCUniversal will do this as part of what it calls its Total Audience Delivery measurement -- amassing broadcast, cable, and digital viewership together. Lovinger: “It’s first time we are combining the audience guarantees across platforms.”

If “makegood” advertising inventory is needed for under-delivery of its viewers 2+ guarantee, Lovinger says this will be reconciled -- and adjusted -- according to each Olympics TV advertiser’s media plan. That inventory will be expressed on broadcast, cable and/or digital platforms.

Lovinger says that overall TV ad deals are ahead of schedule versus where they were with the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia in 2014. In those games, NBC pulled in $800 million in advertising revenues -- which resulted in a small profit. Reports suggest that NBC paid $775 million for those games.

NBC said, for the first time ever, Olympics coverage would be aired live across all U.S. time zones -- no taped delayed telecasts, no holding back of announced competition results or highlights.

NBCUniversal also announced that it has expanded its social media deal with Snapchat. NBC is now selling advertising opportunities on Snapchat’s Geofilters and Lenses areas, adding to the opportunities on Our Stories and Publisher Stories.

For the Rio games, Lovinger says social media advertising deals were closed right up to when the games began. This time, social media deals are ahead now of schedule.

NBC is looking at “8 figures” as a goal for its all social media advertising revenue, says Lovinger.

NBC will be airing the PyeongChang Winter Games in February 9 through 25 -- four days after it airs the Super Bowl.

Later in the summer, NBC Sports will also air the World Cup on Telemundo.

advertising, metrics, olympics, tv

5 comments about "2018 Winter Olympics To Change Ad Guarantee Metric".

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Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 30, 2017 at 1:11 p.m.
Wow! Talk about the TV networks adopting digital selling methods like "audience buying" for better targeting and here we have NBC switching from meaningless set usage rating guarantees to equally meaningless people 2+ "viewer" data as the basis for their audience guarantees for the Olympics. As Phil Rizzuto used to say, "Holy cow". But at least NBC will get to count its people 2+ "viewers"---assuming that Nielsen can measure teens and children---across platforms. Now that's progress.
Reply

John Grono from GAP Research, March 30, 2017 at 6:53 p.m.

Ed it is long overdue that HH Ratings are killed. We dropped it (I mean it is still collected and reported somewhere) about 20 years ago.

Our cross-device is restricted to P18+ because empanelling people under 18 is (correctly) subject to AMSRS and Privacy Act restrictions. It does mean that we are close to being able to report P18+ 'total broadcast' ratings (plus demogrphic subsets).

We mustn't forget that if it was a simple thing to do ... someone would have already done it (with the required degree of statistical rigour of course).

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 30, 2017 at 7:11 p.m.

John, I beg to disagree about household set usage ratings being dead and buried---and I was one of those who led the fight years ago to kill them. But now we have a concerted movement by programmatic buying platforms trying to intrude into TV time buying as well as the "linear TV establishment" to revert to household ratings. The digital folks want to use "big data" set usage ratings to define the marketing value of viewing audiences for TV shows and , thereby, to create an indexing system to be applied upon Nielsen's viewer ratings as the currency for programmativ TV buys. The networks and some of the smarter cable folks have looked at the data and found that it, invaraibly paints a far better demograpic portrait of their audience delivery than people ratings---- so they are trying to rope in gullible buyers with the same device for selected portions of their GRP inventories as it is to their benefit to do so. In the same manner, the race to provide "cross platform" audience measurements is heading in the same direction --with the emphasis on what data can be gotten quickly---device usage---in lieu of more difficult to ascertain viewing data. In short, we seem to be going backwards, with all of the lessons learned years ago about how misleading set usage is as an indication of viewing getting lost in the shuffle. By the way, I applaud the networks and cable channels for taking this route. Were I in their place, I'd do exactly the same thing.

John Grono from GAP Research, March 30, 2017 at 7:37 p.m.

Ed, not sure what your underlying message is.

Are you saying that while HUTs are a pretty vapid or blunt metric, that the programmatic movement is breathing life back into it by using it as a link to 'big data'?

If so, I see your point. If you are saying this is a new 'golden age' then I has me doubts, but as always would love to see the evidence and be proven wrong.

Ed Papazian from Media Dynamics Inc, March 31, 2017 at 8:06 a.m.

John, yes, I'm saying that set usage ratings are being revived as a TV audience "metric"---unwittingly by the Programmatic people who dont understand the difference between set usage and viewer ratings and deliberately by the network and cable sellers who know exactly what the differences are and see an advantage to them in having their shows rated by a set usage methodology, which is merged with purchase data to profile the "value" of their content. I regard this as a major step backwards and am on the forefront of the opposition". I have posted many, many times and written extensively on how misleading device usage is but the agencies are strangely silent about what's happening. My interpretation is that they would rather have more and more data rather than less data and this is what leads them to be accepting---or silent about----this retrograde step.